Scholarly consensus
Matthew is the first book of the New Testament but not the first gospel. It reproduces about ninety percent of Mark, often word for word, adds a large body of teaching that it shares with Luke, and supplies material found nowhere else: the genealogy, the magi, the flight to Egypt, the parable of the sheep and the goats, the guard at the tomb. It was written in Greek, not translated from Hebrew or Aramaic, and is usually dated between 80 and 90 CE. Its author is unknown.
The name
Papias said that “Matthew compiled the sayings (logia) in the Hebrew dialect, and each interpreted them as he was able” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.16). Whatever Papias meant, it does not describe this book, which is a Greek narrative built on a Greek Mark and shows no sign of translation. An apostle who had followed Jesus would not have needed to copy his memories from someone who had not. The name Matthew was attached to the gospel in the second century; the tax collector called Levi in Mark 2:14 is renamed Matthew in this gospel (9:9), which may be where the association began.
Setting
The gospel was written for a community of Jewish followers of Jesus in conflict with the synagogue after the fall of the Temple. It quotes the Jewish scriptures more than any other gospel, with a formula of its own: “this took place to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet” (1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9). Several of these quotations do not match any known text of the prophet cited, and 2:23 (“he shall be called a Nazorean”) matches nothing at all. Antioch in Syria is the most common proposal for its origin.
The genealogy and the nativity
The gospel opens with a genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, arranged in three sets of fourteen (1:1-17), though the third set contains only thirteen names. Luke also gives a genealogy through Joseph (3:23-38), and between David and Joseph the two lists share almost no names; even Joseph’s father differs (Jacob in Matthew, Heli in Luke). Both trace descent through Joseph, whom both say was not the father. Matthew’s nativity is told from Joseph’s side: a dream, the magi, Herod’s massacre, the flight to Egypt, the return to Nazareth because Judaea was unsafe (2:22), which assumes the family had lived in Bethlehem. Luke’s nativity is told from Mary’s side, has the family living in Nazareth and travelling to Bethlehem for a census, and has them return home peacefully after forty days. The two accounts agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a virgin named Mary, betrothed to Joseph, in the days of Herod, and on little else. See the discrepancy tables.
The law
Matthew 5:17-19 has Jesus say that he has come not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfil them; that not one letter or stroke will pass from the law until heaven and earth pass away; and that whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do so, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. No other gospel has the saying. In 23:2-3 Jesus tells the crowds to do whatever the scribes and Pharisees teach, since they sit on Moses’ seat, but not to imitate their conduct. In 10:5-6 and 15:24 he limits his mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Matthew also removes Mark’s comment that Jesus declared all foods clean (compare Mark 7:19 with Matthew 15:17). This is the gospel of a community that kept the law and believed Jesus had told them to. It sits uneasily beside Paul of Tarsus, who wrote that Christ is the end of the law (Romans 10:4) and that no one is justified by its works (Galatians 2:16). See Paul of Tarsus against Jesus.
Matthew’s additions
Where Matthew adds to Mark, the additions tend in one direction. Mark’s young man at the tomb becomes an angel descending in an earthquake (28:2). Mark’s silent women run to tell the disciples and meet Jesus on the way (28:8-9). A guard is posted at the tomb, and a story is told that the Jewish authorities bribed the soldiers to say the body was stolen, “and this story is still told among the Jews to this day” (28:11-15), a sentence written for readers two generations later. At the crucifixion the tombs open and many saints rise and walk into Jerusalem (27:52-53), an event no other writer, Christian or otherwise, records. The gospel ends with the eleven on a mountain in Galilee, where “some doubted” (28:17), and the command to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (28:19), the only threefold formula in the gospels; in Acts, baptism is in the name of Jesus alone (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5).
Why it matters here
Matthew is the gospel most used by the Jewish-Christian groups who kept the law and rejected Paul of Tarsus; Irenaeus says the Ebionites used it alone (see the Ebionites). It preserves, more than any other gospel, a Jesus who confirms the Torah, which is what the Qur’an says of him (3:50; 5:46). It also shows, more than any other, how a community wrote its own situation back into the story.
Sources
- Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, chapter on Matthew.
- Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, on the two infancy narratives.
- Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1-7: A Commentary, Hermeneia.
- W. D. Davies and Dale Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary.